Posted
by
Soulskillon Saturday July 28, 2012 @06:01PM
from the but-that's-not-hypey-enough dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Romero is willing to give Ouya the benefit of the doubt, but he sees it filling a niche for neither gamers nor developers. 'I think it's cool that they're making a platform, but it's not really the answer that's coming from Apple about the next generation of consoles. Developers really want to invoke the spirit of the Apple II, Android isn't the operating system with which to do it,' Romero said. 'There are two platforms: [iOS] makes money [and] is still very programmable, like the Apple II, and then the other is Android, which is a piracy platform, and you're not doing anything new with it.'"

You are developing for Android which has quite a bit of a user base.
All you need to do is submit your thing to Google Play and be done with it.
It also forces people to support game controllers for their Android games. Simulating twin sticks with a touch screen is pathetic when the system supports any USB game controller that would also work on a PC. Well, at least it does support it on ICS. Not sure about Honeycomb. It's not even going the extra mile but the extra inch.
Riptide GP THD does also support 3D monitors with this nVision thing from nvidia. Works great, too.
Now imagine what basically is an Android tablet without a touch screen, the need to be as slim as possible, quite a lot of manufacturers where to buy parts(chpsets, connectors and so on) and you will find that the Ouya is not only viable but also a neat idea.
Sonic got ported to Android, there are Amiga emulators that work great with a controller, there is MAME and DosBOX. I bought Master of Magic from GOG(I still have the floppies but no drive anymore) and play it on my Transformer Prime.
I think I recall distinctly that Apple doesn't want emulation in the AppStore.

Userbase: [x]
Parts manufacturers: [x]
Already available popular games: [x]
???
Profit.
I propably won't buy one for myself because I already got a similar system. But it did cost substantially more than the Ouya. IMHO they should reconsider Google Play. Sooner or later somebody will hack it into the system.

Dear mods, This whole thread was much more entertaining than the stream of 0's it currently has. Even the insults traded back and forth remained on topic. Although I admit, I wouldn't let any of these guys in my production department.

Believe me or not, i don't care. Maybe i should of said 2-12 weeks depending on complexity, but in the end 12 grand is worth it even if was only ever pirated (doubtful), the exposer alone makes it better than advertising.

It's not worth it when you can spend the same amount of time developing something new for the actually profitable platform. You are wrong in every possible aspect, you demonstrate lack of experience, and your grammar sucks. Your claims of intelligence or competence are very hard to believ

What I said is that given the choice between porting and creating something new, it's dumb to port.

Different skills are required for porting vs. creating something new. Because different personnel tend to have different skills, it becomes easier to have one team do the ports, have another team creating something new, and do that in parallel. That's how the fighting game market worked back in the early 1990s: one team would make an arcade game, and another team would port it to Super NES and Sega Genesis while the first team would make the next arcade game. Or what am I missing?

You're doing it wrong. The business logic for your app should be written in a platform agnostic way, and will be trivial to port. The difference between building our app for iOS or Android is which ant task to run.

And who ports the abstraction layer that provides the platform-agnosticism? Here you have someone who actually does that questioning the merits of a specific platform, so if you can't convince these people to do the heavy lifting for you, how can you keep yourself platform-agnostic? Specifying a

I used to program the Apple II. All you had to do was turn it on. You didn't have to buy a second, unrelated, $1000 computer just to write programs for it, nor pay $100 per year to the company that makes it. You didn't have to submit to sudden, arbitrary and anticompetitive censorship of the programs you could RUN ON YOUR OWN COMPUTER.

Apple may make many cool things, but lets not bullshit -- their devices are about neither creativity nor freedom -- they are about consumption, censorship, and control.

And those are the walls that keep the pirates out. No not pirates, they will still make a profit. It's the brigands who just want an easy buck. The walls keep out the brigands and the freeloaders.

It's no different than a midieval town. No walls and you are an easy mark. Walls and it takes much more effort.

may as it be, but the comment is kinda strange coming from the dude who made his fame and money on a system that had bare metal access and loads of piracy - the dos pc. apple's ios doesn't offer that kind of access(you go outside the api's and the app isn't supposed to make it to the store) or freedom.

maybe the comment about not doing anything new with it is in regards of ouya which is true: it doesn't really offer anything a generic 100 dollar android pc doesn't, in that regard ouya reminds me of some branded "gaming pc"'s that some brands advertised as the next coming of jesus back in the day while they offered nothing the generic pc didn't(usually they just came bundled with say sound card ready installed, but you could order pretty much any pc that way anyways).

there's two things devs should consider usually: is it possible to port and is it possible to get enough users. that's how pc killed amiga etc. despite being much bitchier platform to code for and despite having the rampant home-copy piracy that consoles lacked. it just had such a large userbase and it offered things that weren't possible on competing platforms.

and may as it be but for warez is easier to find for ios than randomly chosen android sw that doesn't happen to be in some pack.

PC was huge in business world that was reticent to adopt anything until IBM put their stamp on it. The market for non-business computers was essentially very small. The market was small enough that it was expensive to innovate. PC really didn't innovate until the competition lagged.

oh fuck - I just realized that this is romero we're talking about and not carmack!

he's a fucking idiot and can't apparently design for shit nor code for shit. the games on which he was designer we're pretty much built around what the engine could or not do anyhow(keens would have been shit without carmacks engine and so would have wolf3d been and so would doom). he's lost the ball if he had any over fucking 20 years ago.

it totally makes sense that romero would say that android lacks apple II spirit and that iOS would have it because it's the total opposite. it totally makes sense too that he would be out of the loop of what's current gen(and what was last gen) in android tv boxes too so he's the last person you should ask for views on the whole matter.

"John Romero, who 25 years ago practically invented the first-person shooter genre with Wolfenstein 3D" is just total bullshit too.

By your definition of "not bad". A lot of players actually care more about multi-player instead of single player, and Quake III is still regarded as one of the most competitive and well designed games in that respect.

Romero, with his massive ego, sat in his highly expensive Dallas office, certain that he was the king of computer games, basically telling the world this, telling them how all the money he'd spent on his fancy office was to create a culture and environment to create the greatest game ever known......and he comes out with what is probably still the biggest most overhyped flop in the history of computer games.

Yeah, I think I'll take anything he says and continue to believe the opposite, because if there's one thing Romero is a fucking genius at, it's being completely and utterly wrong. When it comes to computing he has one of the best CVs on the planet for incorrect predictions.

Yeah he also made his money when a lot of people didn't have computers let alone net access so piracy was less of a problem and even when something was pirated it wasn't automatically available to the whole world. I suspect that makes a difference. That and it was cheaper and quicker to make a game compared to now. Making a Mario Bros clone is something one or two people can do. Making a GTA clone will take many more people or if only two people do it, it'll take a lot longer.

Ease of piracy is a large part of what made Windows into the juggernaut it is today. Just like Bill Gates said, they may not be able to charge pirates today but someday down the road they will. Android may be easy to pirate with today but it won't always be that way. Jellybean is already shipping with the ability to encrypt market downloads with a device specific key. More and more Android chews through the market share of the other OSs and at some point just like with Windows a tipping point will hit where the market share will be so overwhelming and the difficulty of pirating will be 'just so' that you won't help but be able to make money on the platform. In the meantime, make your money on iOS but keep an eye on Android. Don't forget to sharpen up those Java skills.

Piracy is also what made the Apple II the juggernaut it was. At least none of my friends and I (young teens at the time) would've talked our parents into buying an Apple ][ if we know we wouldn't be able to get hundreds of pirated games for it.

I say let the pirates in, no money whore 99cent shovelware makers will be interested and you will end up with a thriving homebrew / indy community that people wont pirate cause the makers will be giving it away.

There are other ways to manage security and combat piracy without draconian rules, you know. Other companies have been doing it for years. Apples way is, well, quite possibly the worst way for both developers and users. Take a look at the options available on BlackBerry, for example. They seem to be able to manage security without imposing absurd rules or forcing users to only use their app store. Their app store does have a number of simple options for developers to mitigate piracy that are non-intrusi

... consumption and control are what makes it possible for me to make a living as a developer. I'm not going to make games for a device that I can't make money from.

Free is great, but what you get for free (as far as games go) tends to be kind of.... well... un-polished, ugly, and kind of broken. People working for free just can't put the effort into a title that people who can devote all their working hours can.

I haven't hit any creativity problems in iOS, and freedom is pretty pointless when you can't a

The Apple II was neither a smartphone, nor a tablet, nor a games console - and do you know what all of those have in common? No serious developer would consider actually writing his software one them, due to form factor, peripherals, screen size and basically everything else.

You don't need a seperate computer to write software for a Mac - that would be the proper comparison. You also don't need to participate in the developer program if you don't want to distribute it via the App Store. And no filtering, ei

You can still do this. The developer program is free here https://developer.apple.com/programs/register/ [apple.com] , as are the developer tools. The sand boxing requirements only apply if you want to sell your app through the apple store. You can do anything you want on your own computer.

Oh c'mon now, didn't John "Make you his bitch" with Daikatana? I know that I certainly felt like crying like a little bitch when those damned AI sidekicks got hung on a wall or walked out right into the fire and caused me to redo the level!

Old John was just so far ahead of his time you failed to appreciate him. Bad AI, uninspired level design, hell he beat EA to the punch by over a decade!

Interesting, how did you distribute your apps back then? Was there an store that distributed your applications and took less than a 30% cut?

Oh, wait, are you under the impression that you can only develop for Apple computers if you distribute through the app store and pay the $100 a year that you mention above? Are you under the impression that people can't download their apps from whatever store that you want without any interaction with the app store? Is there some sort of censorship that is applied

I've done quite a bit of Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari 2600 (I know my 6502) and I'm now an iPhone developer, and I agree with John Romero on this one. You can write and C and go pretty low level when you want to. I don't know exactly what it is, but it somehow has a similar vibe to programming those older machines -- I've thought the exact same thing myself many times.

Adjusted for inflation, the cost of an Apple IIe is more than a Macbook Air and iPod Touch combined. In some ways I do hate how locked

I haven't seen any new computers in the Apple store that go for less than $1200...I suppose I could be wrong about that.

The Mac mini is $600. It is perfectly fine for iOS development. But lets go wild and spend $650 to get the RAM to 4G. I used a 2008 era MacBook of similar configuration for a few years. Technically the mini would be better since the CPU and RAM are of more recent designs.

Oh Good Lord, drank a little heavy on the iKoolaid did you? I mean did you even read what you wrote? You sound like a fricking press release! Seriously do you work for Apple? Because if not you should really apply, since all you did was spout flowery BS for half a dozen lines without saying anything other than PR crap.

Apple sells because its FASHION, okay? Do you think Air Jordans sell crazy money because it" derives from the people inside Nike really being into building great projects"? fuck no, its a stat

With iOS you don't have to either. You can jailbreak and develop right on the device.

And with android you don't have to jump through that hoop, even if it can be an easy hoop to jump through.

Why should developers support a system that purposefully makes life harder for them for no technical reason?

This notion that iOS is not for the technical is something that rabid Apple haters cling to with all thier might, ever repeating as you have the falsehoods long shattered - why is it people like you cannot learn?

Anything can be for technical people.. if they are sadistic. I mean hell some people take joy in finding flaws with systems that are locked down completely etc like the ps3/wii etc which is why you can even jailbreak ios in the first place. After the first person has broken it it's easy, but shou

But perhaps not that surprising considering Romero has moved to 'social' game development. Considering the dreck that falls under that category, such as Zynga's games, you might ask whether it really is all about the money now? That is, at least until he decides to do something else entirely different next year - his Wikipedia bio suggests he changes gaming studios and wives about as often as he changes underwear.

his Wikipedia bio suggests he changes gaming studios and wives about as often as he changes underwear.

Way to keep it classy, guy.

well the wikipedia bio does suggest that. that's quite peculiar too.can't comment on the cheesy cartoon games he's making nowadays since it's only a google+ app.http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2012/06/15/pettington-park-review/ [insidesocialgames.com] if you're wondering, yes you buy tokens with real money or by spamming your friends(so it's kind of peculiar that he disses ouya for being viable for micro transaction games.. which is sort of bullshit since if that's true then it's viable for making games that require you to do a

Ummm, John Romero lost all credibility AGES ago.
The first person who said it was a piracy platform was a guy who sold his free to play game for 1$. It still got pirated because it was a pay-to-win game that honestly wasn't worth the admission fee. Romero is again making you his bitch. And Slashdot too as it would seem.

The Ouya is a valid platform. I have hooked up my tablet to my monitor/a friends TV a couple of times and played quite a few very good games on it. At the price point those games usually sell piracy is indeed a service problem.

Yes, you do have to jailbreak your iDevice device to do it but once you do that you will find no platform that offers the ease of pirating that iOS does. Once you load Installous [hackulo.us] it's on like Donkey Kong(TM). Get it?

...Why Romero or anything he says is still relevent?Yeah, he used to be kind of a big deal, but the last time he did anything relevant was Red Faction. If you really want to stress it then you could put down Area 51 but honestly Romero just seems to be a name these days.

Isn't it amusing, though, that the company John Romero started after leaving id Software actually produced more good games than id has produced since Romero was forced out?
I realize that Romero didn't work directly on the "good" Ion Storm games, but it's still interesting. Ion Storm put out Deus Ex, Anachronox, and Thief: Deadly Shadows. These are three well regarded games.
The quality of id Software's post Romero releases is debatable at best. Quake II was basically a map pack for Quake with insipid l

John Romero is often given unnecessary shit due to a marketing campaign someone else conjured up and he just said "ok sure" too. He's pretty much a very very nice and enthusiastic guy. John also had a HUGE amount to do with the design of episode 1 of Doom, which gets him mucho credit.

I will say I agree with the posters here, regarding the closed platform with an arbitrary cost to developers and how Apple isn't all roses.It's a bit of a shitty and surprising thing for John to say. Especially the piracy, I'm sure that was the case when Android was new and it was mostly nerds using it, however it's very mainstream now and I'm not convinced the evil piracy Android system is anything like that anymore for the average user. Poor showing John.

I have to agree. With the mature market share Android enjoys I find it extremely unlikely that any but a small fraction of users even know piracy is possible much less how to do it. I mean, first you have to find Android apps to pirate which, yes, they are all over piratebay but before you can get those on your phone easily, you have to download the bittorrent client. Barring that, you have to hook the phone to your computer etc. No freaking way normal people are going through that in large numbers. I would

Even leaving aside the marketing campaign, there was nothing about Daikatana that should lead anyone to believe that Mr. Romero is particular competent. It was repeatedly delayed, ugly, buggy, and all-around uninspired. Basically the ur-DNF.

Piracy is not as big a problem as some devs are making it out to be. The vast majority of Android users wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to pirate an app. The main group involved in piracy is young, techie gamers, but even then it is not a huge portion of users, and I believe that these users buy some games too.

I think the piracy problem is over-blown by game developers who are dissapointed with their Android sales, often due to (a) their game just isn't that good, or (b) Android users are more cost conscious then iOS users and generally spend less online, or (c) they are coming to Android late and the apps that got their earlier have the advantage of incumbency (which I find to be a huge advantage, though less so with games).

Moving away from games (where the Android test suite does better) to general apps the big problem is bugs. Android has tons of bugs (and a very lacking test suite). Since phones don't get update regularly, developers must work around old bugs indefinitely. Look at the average Android app and you will see various users complaining that the app simply doesn't work on their platform. That's the bugs.

Check out the Android bug listhttp://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list [google.com]and you will see an astonishing # of bugs, and lots of comments from frustrated developers who are shocked that important bugs can take years to even be acknowledged by Google, let alone fixed (sorry for the bad grammer).

The most recent release (4.1.1) still has lots of bugs, but it appears to be much more solid then previous releases (like 4.0 and 2.3.0 which were shameful, in my opinion), so I hope this is an indication that Google is moving to get the bug infestation under control.

Finally, let me add that this problem has nothing to do with openness, open-source, or fragmentation. If Google would just start focussing on killings bugs, and extend the Android Compatibility Test Suite (the official test suite) so that manufacturers will stop introducing so many new bugs, then fragmentation would become diversity, developers would become more productive, and users would have a better experience.

I agree. The real "problem" is that (many) developers just don't get it that their fart app really isn't worth $.99 to most people. Clue: your weather widget... it's a fart app. Your uber-mega-clock? It's a fart app. Battery Gauge Max++ Professional Edition is... a fart app. If you really dig on Google Play, you're going to see thousands of "apps" almost all of which are just superfluous fluff. Even most of the games are roughly equivalent to the freeware of the Windows platform circa 1990.

Developers... get this: unless you're making either a top-tier game or a truly powerful app like Documents to Go or Repligo PDF Reader, you're making crap we don't need. Some of your fart apps we might kinda-sorta want, a little bit, maybe. And sometimes someone of us might bother with your token microtransactions because we're bored. But don't think counting on that income is a valid business plan. It's not. There are five other stock-ticker apps out there that are actually free instead of almost-but-not-quite-free. Sure, maybe yours comes with a blue icon and sure, maybe that's enough motivation for someone to pirate yours instead of using one of the free ones with green icons, but don't kid yourself... you didn't get pirated because Android blah blah platform for piracy blah blah. No. You got pirated because your product really, truly isn't worth $.99 (With the notable exceptions mentioned earlier.)

What's always amazed me about all of this is the idea (and I've heard some really bad app developers tell me this) that all you have to do is put your product in an app store, be it iTunes, Android, or anywhere, and just sit back and collect the money. On what planet do these people come from? It's a fair question, because here on earth, the paradigm for selling software hasn't really changed a lot since the 1990's. You have an app to sell? Awesome. Get online, get yourself listed everywhere, build a support ecosystem where you engage your users and make them feel like the product was worth it, be awesome, and then collect the money. You see it time and time again. Those that succeed do some variation of this. Those that don't... well, they're rightly upset that they're stuck with a bunch of eggs that never turned into chickens. That's what you get for counting them before they hatch.

I think the misconception may be that when android first came out, "pirates" knew it was the better platform, for them. Therefore from the beginning android has had the rep.

However, after the early adopters, the pirate issue probably leveled out. I would wager that "piracy" has remained fairly even in the playstore and its predecessor even though devices accessing said store has risen massively since then.

So speaks John Romero. He should know what he is talking about, things like making money and such, right? Oh wait. He was the guy who managed to bankrupt his company and failed to deliver several games for which he had received money in advance, and the games he did delivery were failures.

He also bought offices with marble floors, opening ceilings and all kinds of ostentation whilst trying his very best to destroy his company.

The only thing he did right in his life was trusting John Carmack in the beginning.

Did you watch the video? The guy was asked a question at an Apple II nostalgia fest and he gave his opinion on the statements of the Ouya CEO. I understand why you don't like his opinion, but a well thought-out rebuttal would have been more useful than your repeated bashing of the man himself.

I never tries to rebut his statement. I was just saying he should stay quiet in matters he does not have a clue about.

Now if I wanted to rebut his argument, I would say that Android is increasing in sells worldwide and taking iOS market relentlessly. More and more developers are developing for it each day, and many of them are quite successfully making money with it.

Piracy is mostly a non issue. The low prices of apps in both platforms is a good enough deterrent to piracy. If someone will pirate inste

Alright, lets clear up this business about when ad hominem is a logical fallacy. Using ad hominem to impeach an argument is a fallacy. Using ad hominem to impeach evidence is perfectly valid.

If Romero makes an argument, drawing from generally accepted truths, that "Android is a piracy platform," you can't dismiss the argument because this is Romero talking. If, however, it is reported to you by a reliable that "Romero says that Android is a piracy platform," in the absence of any information on his argument (or if he is simply making an unsupported statement), you can take your opinion of his reliability on that subject matter into account when deciding how much credence to give that statement.

Imagine how much thinking you'd get done if you were obliged to hunt down and evaluate the arguments made by any nutcase with an ax to grind. Since nonsense can be generated instantly as needed, you'd spend all of your time trying to pick sense out of nonsense. Yes, when the argument is right there, or in special circumstances you do have an obligation to give even a nutcase's arguments a fair hearing. But in general if somebody has a track record of unreliable reasoning, you don't owe his arguments a hearing before dismissing them if the conclusion sounds unreasonable.

I once had a dear friend who believed anything. He stored his razor in a pyramid because "pyramid power" would keep it sharp. He didn't know anything about electronics, but following instructions in a book he built a UFO detector circuit which he asserted worked because "it goes off all the time." He believed in fairies, ghosts, bigfoot, and sentient clouds that lived in the stratosphere. I found his notions about cryptozoology particularly charming, because they *might* be true, and a tramp in the woods to hunt hoop snakes and Pukwudgies was harmless amusement. But I didn't feel the need to give his theories about "pyramid power" a fair hearing.

The main problem is that English is a weak language for precise reasoning. When someone says "blah is true because, according to X, blah blah implies blah", this is an ambiguous statement. Does it mean that blah is true because X gave an argument supporting it? Or does it mean blah is true because there is an argument supporting it, that happened to be stated by X? The original statement can be interpreted in many ways, and depending on the interpretation, it can express either a fallacy (the truth of a sta

Piracy is a big problem on iOS, too. Maybe not quite as Android - but it's certainly pretty bad.
The real advantage of iOS is it's not as ridiculously fragmented as Android. It's quite practical to test an iOS app on most/all supported devices. With Android, where there's hundreds and hundreds of devices, the best you can do is test on a few and hope for the best...

On one hand, I find it hard to think Romero has something meaningful to say, as he has not been meaningfully involved in driving innovation in the gaming business for over 16 years

The Apple II was one of the biggest piracy platforms, so I find his choice of comparison to be somewhat faulty.

On the other hand, I can't help but think that the Ouya will not be successful for other reasons. I get the impression that it will produce more tablet-style games for the tv set rather than the rich gaming experience tha

On the other hand, I can't help but think that the Ouya will not be successful for other reasons. I get the impression that it will produce more tablet-style games for the tv set rather than the rich gaming experience that's worthy of the living room

That's where I think you're wrong. Te reason tablet games lack some of the depth found on the consoles is people frankly don't want it. Nobody wants to be sitting on the train waiting through a 10 plus minute cut scene. tablets are a dip in dip out device and debs generally cater to that. As soon as you put the hardware in the living room, provided Ouya can attract developers, you will see much more immersive games. The Tegra3 is certainly capable. There are even some tablet games that offer a PC like expe

Actually I say that despite being attracted to the exact opposite. The fact that I mentioned Aralon which is a game that I would put practically on par with Aralon should have been the first clue. But you're right, I am making a big assumption here and I hope that I will be proven wrong. I'd love to sink my teeth into a fps on Android that is on par with something like Deus Ex or half life.

> "There are two platforms: [iOS] makes money [and] is still very programmable, like the Apple II, and then the other is Android, which is a piracy platform, and you're not doing anything new with it -- you're making a bigger phone that connects to your TV."

Just like Windows is a "piracy platform", but last time I checked there are plenty of games for Windows. And despite efforts like SecureROM and other DRM crap, it's still is a "piracy platform".

Right. And for that matter, so was the Apple IIe. There was no DRM, or anything to stop you from moving games from one machine to another. Not only had DRM not been invented yet, but neither was activation.

...and you don't get automatic updates. I don't know how cheap a pirates time is but mine isn't.
Chances are a person who pirates a 5$ game isn't going to be a customer anyway.
Instead of calling PIRATE and cowering in the corner I would rather expect from a respectable and sage person of John Romero's repute to take a look why anybody would pirate a 5$ game.
Is it because it's a kid with no bank account/credit card? As a kid I more than once skipped lunch and bought comic books with the money. Because I ha

...and you don't get automatic updates. I don't know how cheap a pirates time is but mine isn't.
Chances are a person who pirates a 5$ game isn't going to be a customer anyway.

This times a million. Yes, in my younger and broker days I did pirate Windows applications. As a matter of fact it was quite the habit. But now with Android, there is no way I'm going to put the time and effort into chasing down a 5 dollar app on thepiratebay. There aren't enough hours in the day. I'd rather just buy it and if I don't like it within 15 minutes I can get a refund. If I keep it and it still ends up sucking, whoopdey freaking do. It was five bucks. If the dev puts anything else up, I just won

...or keep track of companies you don't want to do business with.
For instance Gameloft, which is reputedly nothing but a sweatshop. Go to their web page(which I conveniently didn't link) and take a look at the number of games they have. They crank out stuff like crazy. Crunch time follows crunch time. And I haven't yet met any of their devs in the underground billionaires club. They also very much don't show up at Ascot or adorn their arms with a Paris Hilton on both sides.

This is Romero, not Carmack.
Romero is not the king of PC gaming. He isn't even the queen of PC gaming. I always wondered why he is known at all since everybody else did the really heavy lifting and smart-making.

While I believe that this "make you his bitch" stunt wasn't his idea or authorized by him I didn't even understand why his name carried any weight 15 years ago.

You are spot on the convenience thing for using the PlayStore. I get at least 10 updates per week.for my apps. And I bought(sorry "licen

For the dev shops that keep track of piracy (like Madfinger does obviously) I'd be interested in knowing what the country of origin the breakdown of pirates is. I know that Android has a ton of Marketshare in China and I also know they aren't buying any games from the Play Store.

Isn't Dead Trigger "pay to win"? In-app purchases for anything but vanity items is something I don't find very attractive. But at 1$ I'd guess that that is their main revenue stream. So going free(as in no initial cost) was propably a smart move anyway.
I bought Shadowgun and one of their Samurai games which have not yet steered me to in-app purchases so it could be thei are trying a new way to generate revenue. Also f2p + in-app purchases is at the moment en-vogue. Isn't Valve in the hat-making business an

Yes, dead Trigger was pay to play and pay to win which is a slap in the face to legal purchasers of the game. I bought shadowgun as well and if I would have had to pay in-game to progress I would have incensed. My understanding is that Ouya is going to the free to play model with micro transactions so assuming they deliver the console we'll definitely get a first hand account on whether the model works.